“ ‘Otsche’, I’ll put, ‘I’ve done so much for you. I’ve given you two and a half packets of tobacco and a little gold ring I found in the factory. I know full well you gave the ring straight to Hagen, and he swapped it with one of the orderlies for a pound and a half of bacon stolen from the kitchen. But I won’t complain about that if you’ll be nice to me again. Since yesterday morning you’ve not as much as said “Good day,” you don’t even look at me any more. You’d better be nice to me or I’ll go and split to the doctor. I’ll tell the doctor everything you told me about those filthy tricks Liesmann and Hagen get up to with you.’ That’s what I’ll put.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t split,” I answered. “You’ll only get the worst of it.”
“All right, then will you take the letter to Otsche this evening?”
But no, I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to take any active part in this affair. It didn’t matter at all, for Brachowiak easily found another messenger, and next morning, he reported in a voice trembling with indignation, that Otsche Schmeidler had sent him an answer.…
“What sort of answer?” I asked. “Is he going to be nice again?”
“I can lick his arse,” cried Brachowiak furiously. “That’s the message I get from that snotty-nosed little whore. But you wait, my boy. I’m finished with you now for good and all. You’re not getting anything else out of me, not another pipeful of tobacco!”
Oh, it was all right for Brachowiak to talk, I knew full well he hadn’t a shred of tobacco left, Otsche had cleaned him out, and Otsche knew it too.
But what had Hagen, our king, to say to all this, that charming and amiable young man who always kept up the appearance of cleanliness at least? Emil Brachowiak was utterly without shame in his amorous troubles, he knew Hagen’s relationship to Schmeidler, he constantly saw the youngster in the closest proximity to the king, Otsche himself had told him of the filthy tricks they practised with each other—but despite that Brachowiak went running to Hagen and poured out all his troubles to him, as he had to me. And Hagen listened and was kind and friendly, he spoke comfortingly and promised to act as a mediator with Schmeidler. And behind Brachowiak’s back they laughed at the useless fool—oh, what a truly hellish atmosphere of baseness and deceit!
Brachowiak was a clever and industrious worker, he had to some extent a position of trust in the factory, also he often came in contact with civilian workers and knew how to flatter and to beg, in a short time he once more had tobacco.
“This time I’m not giving in, this time he won’t get anything, not a pipeful!”
And Brachowiak went up and down the corridor with his long-stemmed pipe, and blew smoke into Schmeidler’s face without even looking at him. Brachowiak had reported sick and was not going to work. He spent his leisure-hour with me and, lo and behold, this time Schmeidler appeared in the prison yard, Schmeidler, quite alone, without Hagen and Liesmann. A rare sight.
“I won’t even look at him!” Brachowiak assured me, as we passed Schmeidler, who was sitting on the steps in the sunshine. The light summer wind moved his fair hair, he looked young, he looked fresh, he looked uncorrupted.
As we passed for the second time, Brachowiak said, “Otsche smiled at me just now.”
“Hang on to yourself,” I warned him. “The young lout is only after your tobacco—by the way, can you give me a bit of tobacco for a cigarette?”
“I haven’t got any tobacco down here,” said Brachowiak quickly. “No, he’s not going to get a bit of it. He only wants to clean me out again.”
But at the third time round, Schmeidler said quite amiably to us: “Shall we have a game of cards?”
And he took out of his pocket a filthy pack on which one could hardly distinguish the pips. Brachowiak was willing enough, so I did not say no either, but I nudged him and he nodded reassuringly, as if his mind was firmly made up. So we played our game of cards, Schmeidler with extraordinary luck, Brachowiak with equally remarkable ill-fortune. Schmeidler was the winner, I came second.
The youngster cried: “That’ll cost you a bit of tobacco, Emil,” and laughed at him, and Brachowiak took out his tobacco (which he hadn’t got with him!) and generously filled the youngster’s tin, while I, when I held my hand out, got barely enough for a cigarette. Then the two went round the yard, arm in arm, pressing closely together. I was forgotten. That evening, Emil Brachowiak was in tears again: Schmeidler had cleaned him right out and would have nothing more to do with him. And next day, Brachowiak really split on them, not to the medical officer, but to the head-nurse. But nothing happened, nothing at all. Why not, I do not know. The authorities had everything in their power, they could have punished the offenders, they could have separated them, they could have put the youngsters, that constant source of trouble, into other institutions. They did nothing, just as they did nothing about our hunger. I suppose it was immaterial to them how we lived and in what filth we rotted away. Of fifty-six, there were not six who would ever see freedom again. All, or nearly all, were sentenced to live in this place for ever. It was quite unimportant how they did so, that didn’t matter. They had to work as long as a bit of productivity could be squeezed out of their emaciated bodies. Let them put up with it or perish, life was outside, and this was the house of the dead!
46
I return now to my own experiences. It is still the day of my arrival, the leisure-hour is just over, I have formed my first impressions and made my first acquaintances, and now I stand in the long dim corridor that remains gloomy even on the brightest day. Hour after hour I wander to and fro, idle, tormented and yet dulled. I am glad when the head-nurse or a warder comes by with a patient taking washing to the store or carrying a pile of old documents. At least something is happening! What is happening does not concern me, and really nothing is happening at all, but I am diverted from myself and my uncertain fate; I may not, I cannot bear myself any longer.
Sometimes I stand by the one window that is accessible to me—the other is obstructed by the glass box—and stare out over the barb-wired walls, into freedom, which lies glittering in the sun “outside”. They must be limes; they shade a highway along which cars are speeding by, I see girls in bright dresses riding on their bicycles—but I turn my head away and walk on in the gloomy corridor. Life outside tortures me, it does not belong to me any more, I am severed from it, I want to know no more about it. Drive on, all of you. May the trees wither, the sand blow over meadows and fields, there should be desert about such a death-house as this, dry dead desert.
Sometimes I go into one of the two day-rooms, either the big one or the small one, and sit there for five or ten minutes with my fellow-sufferers. Fellow-sufferers? They cannot suffer as I do, their fate has been decided already, it is the uncertainty that torments me so much.
Some sleep with their head on the table (for it is forbidden to sleep in bed), others stare dully ahead, a small youngish man, completely crooked, with a squint in both eyes (but each in a different way), and a pear-shaped head, has an incredibly dirty pack of cards in front of him, and very slowly he lays one card on the other and grins stupidly at it. One has a newspaper in front of him, but he is staring over the top of it, and one has even taken his trousers off and with a face distorted by pain he examines the suppurating and bleeding furuncles on his leg—at our meal-table!